Exercises:

1. Give your own examples illustrating different kinds of opposition.

2. Read the information about the development of the English grammatical theory. Prepare a report on the theoretical views of one of the scientists mentioned in the Appendix.

Lecture 2. The Basic Units of Language

The phoneme, the morpheme, the word, and the sentence are regarded as the basic units of language and speech. The definitions of these units have never been generally agreed on, yet following are some brief functional characteristics.

The phoneme is the smallest distinctive unit. The phoneme has no meaning, its function is purely differential: it differentiates morphemes and words as material bodies. The phoneme /b/, for instance, is the only distinctive marking the difference between tale /teil/ and table /teibl/.

The morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word. It is built up by phonemes so that the shortest morphemes include only one phoneme. The study of the morphemic structure of the word was formed on the basis of two criteria: positional (the location of the marginal morphemes in relation to the central ones) and functional (the correlative contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word). Morphemes on the upper level are divided into root-morphemes and affixal morphemes. The roots express the concrete, material part of the meaning of the word while the affixes express the specificational part of the meaning of the word, the specifications being of lexico-semantic and grammatico-semantic character.

The roots of notional words are classical lexical morphemes. The affixal morphemes include prefixes, suffixes and inflexions. Inflexion expresses different morphological categories. The root is obligatory for any word while affixes are not obligatory, therefore one and the same morphemic segment of functional status depending on various morphemic environments, can in principle be used now as an affix and as a root. The morphemic composition of modern English words has a wide range of varieties. In the lexicon of everyday speech the preferable morphemic types of stems are root stems, one root stems or two root stems and one affix stem with grammatically changeable words. This stems take one grammatical suffix, thus the abstract complete morphemic model of the common English word is the following:

prefix + root + lexical suffix + grammatical suffix

As the result of the application of the distributional analyses to the morphemic level different types of morphemes had been discriminated. On the basis of the degree of self-dependence free morphemes and bound morphemes are distinguished.

On the basis of segmental relation we distinguish segmental and supra-segmental morphemes. In distributional terms intonation contours, accents and pauses are considered to be supra-segmental morphemes.

On the basis of grammatical alternation additive morphemes and replacive morphemes are distinguished (looked, smaller). The root phonemes of grammatical interchange are considered as replacive morphemes (drive-drove-driven).

On the structural basis morphemes are divided into:

• affixational morphemes: prefix, suffix, infix (man – men)

• word-morphemes: words which are used as auxiliaries to form a certain grammatical form: to have, to be, the Article

• zero-morphemes – the meaningful absence of the morpheme

The ways of the formation of the grammatical form:

3 synthetic ways + 1 analytic way:

1. Affixation

2. Sound gradation (man – men)

3. Suppletion (от разных корней) go – went – gone

4. The analitycal way (the formation of the gr form by means of the auxiliaries)

The productive ways both for English and for Russian are affixation and the analytical way. Sound gradation and suppletion are non-productive. If we compare Russian (synthetical) and English (analytic) we find that the ways of the formation of the grammatical form are the same; the difference is in the frequence of occurrence. The Russian language uses more affixation, whereas the English language – the analytic way.

T he word is the smallest naming unit. Though the words terror, terrible, terrific, terrify contain more than one morpheme each, they are the smallest units naming a certain feeling, certain properties, and a certain action respectively. The words are divided into functional and notional. Notional possess some morphemic features expressing grammatical meanings.

To the phrase belong combinations of two or more notional words. These combinations have a nominative function, but they represent the referent of nomination as a complicated phenomenon, be it a concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation. They can be of a stable type and of a free type. The stable phrases (phraseological units) form the phraseological type of the lexicon. Free phrases are built in the process of speech on the existing productive models.

The sentence is the smallest communication unit. It is the immediate integral unit of speech build up of the words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose. It rains is a sentence because it contains a communication.

Though a sentence contains words, it is not merely a group of words (or other units), but something integral, a structural unity built in accordance with one of the patterns existing in a given language. All the sounds of a sentence are united by typical intonation. All the meanings are interlaced accord­ing to some pattern to make one communication.

The sentence groups, each distinguished by its micro-topic as part of a continual text are called supra-sentential constructions. In the printed text the s-s construction coincides with the paragraph. The s-s construction is a combination of separate sentences forming a contextual unity. Such combinations are subject to regular lingual patterning making them into syntactic elements.

Segmental units form a hierarchy of levels. Thus, morphemes are decomposed into phonemes; words are into morphemes, phrases into words. Units of any higher level are formed of units of the immediately lower level. The lowest level of lingual segments is phonemic and is formed by phonemes as the material elements of the higher level segments. The phoneme has no meaning; its function is purely differential. Phonemes are combined with the syllables and the syllable which is the rhythmic segmental group of phonemes is not a sign therefore we can’t say there is a separate syllable level. We should say that all the units of higher level are meaningful. They are called signemes as opposed to cortemes. The word or lexeme is directly naming unit of language, it names things and there relations phrase-located at the phrasemic level. This combination has nominative function but represents the referent of the nomination, have a nominative function, as a complicated phenomenon. This kind of nomination is called polynomination.

Grammatical description of phrases is called minor syntax, in distinction to major syntax studying the sentence and its textual connections. In the sentence any phrase performs its level determines function and on the other hand it can also be used as subject, object, predicative, or any word or phrase. And since the function of these parts denotative they may be also called denotemes and the level at which denotemes are identified in the denotemic level of language. Phrasemic level can be presented as the upper sublevel of the denotemic level. The sentence expresses predication that is shown the relation of the denoted event to reality. The sentence is produced by the speaker in the process of speech as a concrete situational bound utterance. At the same time it has its all syntactic pattern which has both syntagmatic and paradigmatic characteristics. Supra-proposemic level which is called by separate sentences into topical groups.

The supra-sentimental construction is a combination of separate sentences forming a textual unity. The constitutive unit should be reducible to one sentence only. Therefore we come to the conclusion that the generalized unit that is located above the sentence and this distinguished by the topical function is not necessary represented by a group of sentences, it may be formed by one separate sentence which is placed in a semantically, significant position in speech. In oral speech it is delimited by long pause combined with the correspondent low voice. In written texts it is often represented by a sentence paragraph. This unit is called dictemic: (dico-‘speak’, Latin). Thus from the point of view its constitutive units, the super level is called the dictemic. The dictim is defined as an elementary topical segmental unit of the continual text. Syntax is the grammatical teaching of the sentence.

Exercises:

1. What ways of formation of grammatical forms are used in these words?

will go, beautiful, am, uncomfortable, happiness, built, began, illegal, worse, director, communist, least, more beautiful, membership, mice, better, most difficult, geese, seizure, teeth, Polish, frosty, feet, characterize, blacken, convertible.

2. Give your own examples illustrating four ways of formation of grammatical forms.

3. Give the morphemic structure of the following words indicating wether the morphemes are bound or free, derivational or inflexional:

black-bearded, shoemaker, opera-glasses, reading-room, purify, courageous, helplessly, rereads, unlocked

4. Find the word formed with the help of a dialectal suffix:

1. doggy 2. dogeen 3. Charley 4. antie

5. In which of the suffixated words a root-morpheme has trans­formed into an affixational morpheme?

1. actress 2. friendship 3. question 4. childish

6. Find a noun built with the help of a suffix denoting diminutiveness:

a) 1. cutter 2. booklet 3. decorator 4. hostess

b) 1. duckling 2. marriage 3. breadth 4. colonnade

7. Use suffix –ion (-ation, -tion, -sion, -ssion) to form verbs out of nouns.

to collect –

to combine –

ti dictate –

to include –

to introduce –

to produce –

to restrict –

to submit –

to transmit –

8. Fill in the missing forms of the words in the chart:

NOUN	VERB	ADJECTIVE
1. Advertisement/ advertising		X
2.	X
3.	influence
4. appeal
5. X	humour
6. thriftiness/thrift	X
7.	specialize
8. ego	X
9.	create
10. product
11. analysis	analyze
12.	X	anecdotal
13.		Correctional/corrective
14.	exert	X
15. insult
16. offender/offense	offend
17. politician	politize
18.	systemaze
19. benefit
20. competitor	compete
21.		Electric/electrical
22.		Industrial/industrialized
23. nature	X
24. pollution
25. protection
26.	recycle
27. spirit
28. waste